


Unintended

by afrocurl



Category: Friday Night Lights
Genre: F/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-31
Updated: 2008-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-13 11:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2149827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrocurl/pseuds/afrocurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>...when we'll be lovers, loves at last</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unintended

**Author's Note:**

  * For [random00b](https://archiveofourown.org/users/random00b/gifts).



> Thanks to [](http://vysed.livejournal.com/profile)[**vysed**](http://vysed.livejournal.com/) for the beta; at this point, all errors are mine. Written for [](http://random00b.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://random00b.livejournal.com/)**random00b** as a pinch-hit at Sweet Charity. Hopefully this hits at most of the suggestions you gave.

The phone dropped from his hand as soon as the voice on the other end finished the detached statement. _Nothing could be done for her. She died peacefully._ he had heard. Not that it registered at all.

By the time his roommate walked into their room hours later, he was still standing awestruck, phone on the floor beeping.

“What happened man?” he asked while picking up the two pieces of the cordless phone.

Matt had no verbal response. Instead, he walked out of the room and collapsed in the hallway.

It was only with the help of the RA and two of the girls on the floor that Matt revealed what had happened with that phone call. As soon as the words quietly left him, the girls hugged him while offering condolences about the woman that he talked about all of the time.

-*-

Like all things in Dillon, news of her death spread around town as soon as the coroner had her body. Corrina called from the hospital to relay the news to Tami and Eric, sure that even though Matt hadn’t been part of the Panthers for a few years they’d want to know.

Tami stared at the wall before Gracie Belle’s chatter drew her attention back to reality. She’d never really known Matt’s grandma, but the few times they’d passed each other at the supermarket were enough to tell her that the women truly loved her grandson.

Finishing her thoughts of the woman Matt had just lost, she quickly called Eric before passing along the news to Juls.

-*-

Impulse told her she needed to find some random guy with a car to get home even though she hadn’t thought about the boy or his grandmother in years.

By the time she’d found someone and thrown a few things into a bag, she’d finally processed the news her mother had given her over the phone.

Grandma Saracen was gone, ostensibly leaving Matt with no one. The thought alone made her weep while she rode home to the funeral.

-*-

Someone had agreed to bring him back to Dillon for the funeral—who he couldn’t remember—as he piled some clothes into a duffle bag while cradling the phone in his shoulder. The simple fact that anyone would drive to Missouri to get him floored him more than he could imagine in a situation like this.

Hanging up with whoever had called from town, he fumbled to find his father’s last email about a working phone number. As soon as he realized there was no number listed, Matt fell back against his bed before he started to lose it again.

-*-

Tami offered as much support as she knew how to give any of the kids she’d ushered through the school. With few options for the service, outside of the Army support, she knew he’d need someone around to help.

She informed Matt that Julie would help once she’d come back into town, to which Matt only mumbled back his acceptance.

-*-

The knock against the small house rattled the screen and the windows. She’s never needed to be that forceful _before_. Instead of a soft tap, she needed to command his attention.

There was an uncomfortable silence as she waited for him to open the door. No television turned on to _The Price is Right_ , nor were there any sounds of pots and spatulas coming back from the kitchen. Nothing felt right to her, but she was just as sure he felt worse about everything.

His feet hit the wooden floor harder than she remembered before his face appeared behind the opened door.

She tried to avoid his gaze, but couldn’t. “Mom said you needed help,” she said softly.

His only reply was to pull the door back further into the house—the only invitation offered—before he went into the kitchen.

So much of the house looked the same from the last time she’d been there—the television still sat in the corner and the lounge chair was still draped in an old knit blanket—but the rooms were too still, the way Julie always imagined for someone like Buddy’s apartment, not Matt’s home.

“What can I help with?” she asked quietly when he’d finished in the kitchen.

“Dunno,” he mumbled. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Okay,” she trailed off, trying to think what needed to be done. “The funeral is already planned?”

“Yeah, the Army’s takin’ care of it.”

“What about the wake?”

“Not sure, Juls. I just got home yesterday. I’ve been _busy_ ,” he replied curtly before turning on his heels and going into his room.

A loud slam of his door was all she heard before she quietly left the house.

-*-

Anger boiled in her as she quickly drove back home. She’d already forced herself to come home for the funeral and wake—not that she and Matt had spoken more than five words since he graduated two years before—now all she wanted to do was go back to school and forget that she’d ever spent time with him.

Her entrance into the house was as angry as she felt, alerting everyone that she was in a foul mood. Gracie Belle whimpered at the loud slam from the door before Tami could walk towards Julie’s room.

As the second door closed harshly, Julie wept for the first time since she’d heard the news.

-*-

Even though college had mellowed Julie from the girl whose moods changed faster than the seasons, nothing had quelled her slightly melodramatic displays of disapproval. Tami waited with Gracie, trying to calm her younger daughter down from the ruckus Julie created before attempting to discern what went on at Matt’s.

By the time Gracie Belle had gone back to playing with her toys, Eric had come back from practice—exhausted at the way the team responded to the previous week’s victory—wanting nothing more than a quiet evening with his wife and girls.

“Be careful,” Tami intoned when he walked through the front door. “Things didn’t go well at Matt’s,” she continued before pointing down the hall.

“Of course not,” he replied before walking towards Julie’s room. “Sweetie, may I come in?”

Nothing came from inside her room. Cautiously he walked into the room.

“Wanna talk about it, hon?” he asked, trying not to let the horrible practice affect Julie’s already tenuous mood.

“Not really bad. Matt’s being difficult,” she said through the pillow in her face.

“You expect anything else right now? He lost his grandmother,” he cajoled. “Cut him some slack.”

“Hard to do when he slams the door when I ask how I can help,” she muttered as she took her face out of the pillow.

“True, Juls, but just go back and be there. That’s what he needs right now.” He patted her back, and then left the room.

-*-

Hours later, she immerged from her room, still wiping her eyes. “I’m going back to Matt’s,” she informed her parents as they sat with Gracie at the dinner table.

“Sure thing, honey. Be back by midnight, will ya?” Eric asked in between bites of his pork chop.

“Right dad,” she replied before grabbing the keys to the car off the wall and leaving through the front door.

Once the click of the front door registered in her ears, she couldn’t help but wonder about the plan she’d decided on in her room. She wasn’t sure he was still the same as he once was all of those years ago—she knew she wasn’t the same. The fact that she wasn’t the same girl didn’t matter as much as she drove back to his house.

-*-

A knock registered in his mind as he lay on the bed, trying not to think about anything else. It was too much for him—still too much—to be back here without her. Not only was there nothing for him to do around the house, it was too eerie for him without her humming. He couldn’t call up any of the guys from the team, mostly because he hadn’t bothered to keep up with them.

Another knock came from his front door before he padded towards it. Julie’s face stared back at him, this time with a far more determined expression that he recalled from earlier.

“I came back,” she stuttered before continuing, “just to sit and hang.”

“Oh.” He opened the door for her to come in and watched as she sat on the couch as she had done all of those times before.

The sound of her patting the well-worn cushion rattled around him before he finally sat down, ignoring everything else in the room.

He felt her get up briefly, only to come back to her spot as the television provided some white noise.

He sat there, with her by his side, waiting for something to happen.

-*-

She left as quietly as she could once he’d fallen asleep on the couch. There was no way she could move him into his room, so she just left him sitting up before she threw a blanket over him.

-*-

He itched with the desire to call her—mostly to thank her for spending time with him, but also to try and understand why she’d come back that night.

In the time that they’d dated, he never fully understood what prompted her to do anything.

As he rolled out the kink in his neck and stretched his legs and shoulders, he couldn’t stop thinking about her again. It felt nice, he realized, to have someone look after him. He hadn’t had much luck at college with any long-term relationship—something that Landry blamed on his parents being so messed up as to leave him in the care of his grandmother—but it didn’t matter to him. He’d missed something about her.

The relative comfort of their happier days when he was QB1 flooded back into his mind—the first time she kissed him, their night at the cabin, Mud Bowl and State—before he gave into nostalgia and walked over to the phone.

Dialing quickly, he hoped that she’d answer, instead of having to try to explain to Coach or Tami why he was calling.

“’ello,” a female voice responded.

“Um, can I talk to Julie?” he nervously asked.

“Sure, I’ll get her right now.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled before he realized that Tami was walking the phone into Julie’s room.

“Huh?” he heard in his ear a minute later.

“Hi, Julie. It’s Matt.”

“Oh, hi. What’s up?”

“Thanks for last night.”

“Oh, it’s what I’m here for,” she lilted.

“Well, not really. Not after the afternoon.”

“Stop apologizing without apologizing, Matt. I could tell you needed someone around and so I stayed. No big deal.”

“All right,” he paused. “I need some help to get the house ready for the wake, I think.”

“Right. I’ll be over in thirty minutes,” she replied before the tone went dead in his ear.

-*-

Pushing through the screen door, she saw him at the kitchen table with a spoon in hand.

“So much for thirty minutes.”

“You used to run late.”

“Things change. Now, hurry up and finish. We’ve got to clean.”

She only briefly registered the look on his face before she grabbed all of the extra items on the table and moved them into the cupboards.

“Give me a minute,” he muttered between spoonfuls of cereal.

“You’re the one who called me about the help. We’ve got four hours until the service; that doesn’t leave us much time,” she said as she looked around the small house again.

Moments later, she heard footsteps as he went back into his room. He emerged wearing an old pair of gym shorts.

“What should we do first?” he asked.

“The bathroom. I don’t want to know how disgusting it looks, but there’s no way anyone will go near it.”

“It’s not _that_ bad,” he retorted.

“Then let me see what it looks like,” she continued, moving towards the small space.

“’Kay, I’ll get started,” was his only reply before he closed the door.

A smile played on her face for the first time since she’d found out about the situation.

-*-

“I’m leaving,” she yelled. “I’ll be at the service as soon as I change.”

The door slammed a moment later, leaving him alone with his thoughts for the first time in hours. It impressed him that they’d managed to clean everything in less than three hours, leaving him time to quickly shower and have Landry drive him to the mortuary in time.

He smiled briefly before turning the water on, trying to remember that he was alone again.

-*-

Her hand rested in his all through the service. She wasn’t sure why she felt the need to be that close, but it overcame her like so many instances in her life.

By the end of it she felt clammy but thought that nothing else seemed appropriate.

When she suggested that she, Landry, and Matt ride back to the house together, he made no protest. As she opened the door to the back seat of Landry’s worse-for-ware station wagon, his hand helped her in before he started to climb in after her.

Shifting over to make room seemed like the most ordinary part of the ride back.

-*-

By the end of the wake, Matt wanted nothing more than to open a beer and forget about everything else. Instead of relaxing with a Thursday night game, Julie buzzed around the house putting away all of the food brought over.

“You can stop now,” he called into the kitchen.

“Not really. You’ll leave everything out to rot before you leave on Monday. No one will stand for that.”

He laughed at the statement before processing the implication. No one was here to keep the house when he left later in the week. The bottle in his hand slipped from his fingers, still dumbstruck.

Nothing registered with him until he felt her lips against his.

-*-

When pressed to answer why she stayed this long, she had no answer. None that made sense to anyone in Dillon that was. There was the shared history together, which everyone would get, but it was more than that. She felt like he needed something—older and familiar—that no one else understood like her.

She felt his fingers wrap around hers before they walked back into his room.

No one could have explained it otherwise, and she didn’t care.


End file.
